light me up and burn me down
by Exceeds Expectations
Summary: It's in the differences of the light, Ginny thinks, and what they let her see. /Or seven times Ginny looked at Harry and saw him as he was.


**A/N: **So sometimes I get these amazing ideas in my head and I'm all _oh, I need to write this, it will be amazing, people will bow to me, IT WILL BE GLORIOUS _and then I sit down to write it and...it doesn't come out.

This was one of those times.

Written for pairings auditions for Lady's Writing School!

* * *

_It's easy enough for her to fall in love with him. He was meant for her._

_It's in the differences of the light, Ginny thinks, and what they let her see. How many times she has looked at light pooled on his skin and seen him differently? He is a thousand people, but he is one boy – one man- and she only has herself to blame for looking underneath his scar and his bravery and finding a home there._

* * *

**i) daylight**

* * *

She is a little girl and her hair swings in pigtails as she bounces alongside her mother.

"Please, Mum," she begs. "It's not fair!"

But her mother has long since stopped listening, and instead she asks a question she knows the answer to so that Ginny will shut up. He overhears, that boy on the platform with the messy hair and the snowy owl in a shiny cage. His glasses glint in the morning sunshine, and Ginny stops pestering her mother, stops begging, and just stares.

He is Harry Potter.

She is sure of it. Her eyes fly to the thin scar that graces his forehead and she watches it shine pale pink in the light.

When he boards the train, she watches him through the window and sees his nervous smile as he bolts towards his new future and she thinks that maybe she misses him already.

* * *

**ii) candlelight**

* * *

He saves her.

She wakes up on a cold, hard ground that draws her heat out through her pain skin. She feels like a shadow. She is fading, her fingers are not quite as solid as they should be, and he's _watching _her.

She looks at the dull, flickering light that echoes off the walls of the grimy chamber and she is in shock. He has _saved _her.

She looks at him.

The candlelight dances on his face, shadows rising and falling across his skin. It looks as if it is breathing, deep and slow, dark and light, and he can see her watching him, and there's a moment there where they stay still and look at each other and they can't find the words to make it all okay.

She breaks down in rib-breaking sobs and suddenly he is there, his hands warm and _real._

Through her tears she thinks how different he looks in the light of the stuttering flames from the candle brackets on the walls.

He looks like a hero.

* * *

**iii) sunlight**

* * *

The sunlight rains from between the clouds and paints the grass a golden yellow. Ginny sits in the shade of a leafy tree with her parchment on her lap and all the best intentions. She plans to finish her summer work here and now so that she can go and join the others playing Quidditch.

But History of Magic is just _boring _and the sun is too warm and the sky too clear to ignore. So she tilts her head and watches her brothers make inelegant loops through the sky. And then there's Harry, his dark hair shiny in the light, the glare from his glasses causing her to squint just so she can make out his face, swooping and ducking and diving like a bird, like he belongs in the sky.

He's so free, so happy, and it hurts her to think what he's been through (what _we've_ been through).

_Look at him up there_, she thinks, _He's just like any other boy._

She throws her parchment to one side and bounds towards the broom shed.

Who cares about Binns anyway?

* * *

**iv) lamplight**

* * *

She finds herself in the library the night before the Final Task. She hasn't got much to do, and of course she has no classes tomorrow, but she's lost and a little lonely and so here she is, perusing bookshelves pointlessly.

She spies him through a gap in the bookshelves and her fingers still, nails digging into the grooves of the wood.

He sits, shoulder slumped, panic in his eyes, searching desperately for answers that will keep him alive. And she wants so much to help but she _can't _and she'll just distract him and, not only that, but that look on his face has scared her.

He looks broken, like a man who has almost-but-not-quite accepted defeat. She thinks of what tomorrow holds and she's not entirely sure, but flashbacks of roaring dragons and shining golden eggs make her wish that tomorrow never comes.

Harry sighs, thumbing through more pages and rapping his knuckles on the desk. His hands are shaking as he wipes sweat from his brow with his sleeve, arm unsteady. She hears him moan quietly, desperately, and she finally realises that he's not completely fearless.

* * *

**v) wandlight**

* * *

When she thinks back, she pinpoints this as the first time that his eyes meet hers as she stares. He notices her, too.

He teaches her how to defend herself. He teaches her how to attack, how to shield, how to live. She is in awe as he moves. His face becomes a mask, guarded and certain, and he fires jinxes and hexes at Neville and his face glows a hundred different colours above his hand.

He flashes red, and she hears someone drop to the floor. He flashes yellow, and someone screams with laughter. He flashes purple, and she hears _whoosh_ as someone is thrown backwards.

She imagines him flashing green and she feels sick to her stomach.

But she looks up, and he's watching her. He takes her hand, and helps her shoot a silver-strong protector from her wand, and their eyes meet as their faces burn with radiant white.

_He can do this_, she thinks. _He will win._

Because he's Harry and he's strong and she's never believed it more than now.

* * *

**vi) moonlight**

* * *

He leans over the body of the headmaster with grief etched into his edges, horror and pain evident from the slouched set of his shoulders, and she stands in the crowd, her heart still and her breathing unsteady, and she wonders what it is that he has done tonight.

She tries not to look at Dumbledore as she reaches for Harry, touching a soft hand to his shoulder. She murmurs words of comfort and words of reassurance, leading him away quietly.

He is crying. She can see that. She sees the moonlight dance of the tear tracks that run down his face and her heart breaks, but she is his and he needs her, and so she squeezes his arm tightly to fill the gap of things that words can't say.

And as she looks up at the night sky, defiled by the Dark Mark that casts a sickly green glow over the castle, she thinks that she knows what's coming.

And she loves him too much to let it happen.

* * *

**vii) firelight**

* * *

She watches the big wooden doors at the entrance to the castle as they burn.

The fire licks in curls and swirls and she's supposed to put it out but it's too beautiful, too tragically bright and dangerous for tonight. She watches the dark wood blacken.

The echo of war still lingers though the final battle has ended. Ginny can taste smoke and grief on the air.

"Are you going to put that out?" he whispers suddenly, his voice so close that it makes the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end.

She turns, almost twirling in to his arms.

"Harry," she breathes, because that's all she can think right now.

"_Augumenti_," he murmurs, swishing his wand behind her back, before pulling her close.

Their first kiss after the battle is slow and sweet, like a promise for the future. Ginny wraps her arms around his neck and presses every inch of her body to his, tasting the smile on his lips and watching the fireworks that dance behind her eyelids.

"Shame that," she says, "The fire was beautiful."

"You were beautiful," he whispers, "Just standing there in the firelight."

"I missed you," she says, and kisses him again.

And as the morning light comes up around them, Ginny makes him promise he'll never leave again.

* * *

_It's easy enough for her to fall in love with him. He was meant for her._

_She's seen him in the starlight and she's seen him in the sun, but she cannot help but love him most of all in the dark._

_Because in the dark he is just Harry and she is just Ginny and the world around them is inconsequential. She can hold him close and listen to the heartbeats that he's so lucky to have, and she can relish in just being here with him._

_Because she's seen him enough in the light to remember a thousand shades of Harry and she loves him enough to know that they're all the same man._


End file.
